Former Antwerp Police Chief Joyce Carr Retires from Law Enforcement

Joyce Carr Photos
By: Stan Jordan
As you can see from her career beginning to end photos, the years and old age has crept upon Joyce’s law enforcement career. So, with regret and many memories left behind, on March 4, 2015 after over thirty one years, Joyce Carr has retired from her law enforcement career. The hardest part will be missing all the officers but she plans on stopping at the Police Department occasionally to see them. This will leave a void in her life as she thoroughly enjoyed law enforcement duties. She said it was rewarding and a pleasure to work with all her Officers and Reserve Officers.

She received a phone call from Sheriff John L. Keeler wanting to know if she would be interested in working at the Sheriff’s Department. When she told him she would give it some thought, he asked her to come over and try it for a couple of weeks to see what she may think about the job. As a family vacation was already planned for the next following two weeks, he told her to come over anyway and then when she got back from vacation if she wanted the job it would be open for her. Upon return, she was then hired by Paulding County Sheriff John L. Keeler in the early 1980’s. Sheriff Keeler was the sheriff for 25 years. He retired in January of 1985. Joyce says he gave her some of the best advice she ever received and remembers the wisdom of his words to this day.

She started out as a Communications Officer. She then went to Basic Police School and was sworn in as a Reserve Deputy Sheriff. The instructor was Paulding Police Chief Paul Keeler who was so knowledgeable and the greatest teacher anyone one could ever ask for; he forgot more than most police officers ever knew. She also attended an Instructors course and helped teach Basic Police School. Soon after that, she worked in the jail as a full-time Corrections Officer as well as a Reserve Deputy Sheriff. She went to the University of Findlay taking a Corrections Officers class and was then also eligible to teach Corrections Officer classes. In March of 1994, she joined the reserves on the Antwerp Police Department as well as remaining at the Sheriff’s Department as Corrections Officer. In October of 1994, she was hired for the full-time position of Antwerp Assistant Police Chief and then went on to become Antwerp’s first female Police Chief attending a week of Officers’ School in Columbus. Being the only female in the class of approximately 35 other officers, she stated she was mostly ignored by the male members, until one day the instructor called, “Chief Joyce Carr can you answer and give us your options as what you would do about this problem?” At the surprise on the male’s faces, the instructor said, “I guess none of you guys realized she outranks every one of you here”. After that it was amazing how their attitudes changed.

She worked under the direction of Mayor Louise Miller and Mayor Margaret Womack. They stood totally behind their police department officers which made the job pleasurable. Joyce completed all the necessary requirements and paperwork to obtain a grant from Cops First to enable the department to hire another officer. Joyce says her success as Police Chief is due to the enormous amount of assistance from Officer Victoria Clemens and feels that without her dedication and willingness to learn more every day, she would not have been able to accomplish the tasks of Police Chief. Officer Clemens was one of her students during one of the basic police school courses she taught. Joyce saw the potential of her being classified as one of the best law enforcement officer for any department she joined. Actually, before Officer Clemens had completed the entire course and taken her state examination, Joyce asked her if she would like to work for her at the Antwerp Police Department. As soon as her classes and test were taken, she was hired by the Village of Antwerp. Before Officer Clemens joined the department, Joyce and Officer Matt McDougall were covering the department 24 hours, 7 days a week. Officer McDougall resigned as he was offered a better position at another agency. Officer Randy Eaton was hired after Joyce became Chief. When she took over the position of Chief, the department was running in the red and she gives Officer Eaton a lot of credit for helping get the department back in the black. Joyce became known as the truck driver’s red headed nightmare by the truck drivers going through town on US#24. She would hear them talking on their CB’s warning other drivers that they needed to be careful or they would get a citation. Some of their replies were, “Yes we know it. We’ve been hearing she’s on duty ever since we left Indianapolis or Toledo.” However, after a while most of the driver’s that went through Antwerp on a regular basis started talking to her on the CB and realized that unless they really had a citation coming, a lot of them would get a verbal warning, but of course, many of them were cited. When they found out her husband was also a truck driver they found even more respect for her and joked about how many tickets she had given him. The worse traffic offenders were the drivers out of Canada.

Story continued in next week’s issue.

See ya!